Changing of the Guard (19 page)

Too bad, but it was done, and beyond his control. He had to assume that the FBI was trying to track the bug, see what it could collect. He touched the player’s controls, returning the device to its ostensible use. He tapped PLAY, and the tiny FM transmitter inside beamed a digital recording into his radio, that of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee,” arranged for guitar and piano.

He had another piece of business to attend to—checking on the target. Since Jay had seen him, and there was always the chance of being identified, however small, he had to consider permanent removal as an option. It wasn’t what he would like, but given the choice between killing Jay now or allowing him to live and ending up in jail, he would choose the former.

In his mission preplanning, he’d studied the area he used for the attack: He knew where the police stations were, estimated response times, and also where the hospitals were.

He’d considered the latter in case the target had hurt
him
, but knowledge was knowledge. The nearest major hospital off the Beltway at that point was Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The center didn’t serve civilians such as himself, so he’d needed to locate a second hospital.

Jay, not being technically a civilian,
had
wound up in Walter Reed. Having his target in a facility full of military personnel could made things more difficult, so he wanted to take a look.

He pulled onto I-495 and headed for town.

Natadze took Exit 318, Georgia Avenue South, and rolled down the street. It wasn’t far to the hospital.

The medical center was huge, and set well back from the road, looking like some kind of giant bunker. The war on terror, begun years before, had resulted in several pill-boxes that were thinly disguised as welcome areas.

It was not a sight to inspire confidence.

He could pass as military and could probably get in, but if an alarm were raised, getting out would be difficult at best.

Taking the target would require either a massive strike on the building with a great deal of collateral damage, beyond his ability to accomplish alone, or a carefully researched and planned strike through multiple levels of security.

He didn’t like either idea. If they had found the bug, they already knew the attack was not a case of road rage, and would be wondering why Jay had been targeted. Very likely, there would be armed guards, and success in an assassination at the cost of his own life was more than he was willing to pay.

He would have to come up with another way.

He shook his head as he listened to the music. Vynograd, the Russian chasing the bumblebee, had fast hands, no question. Two hundred forty beats per minute at the peak, and on an eight-string, no less, using his
chin
to fret the bass notes, that was something to see. Even though you needed at least a piano for the accompaniment, the guitar part was a very nasty test of hand speed. It was a showpiece, of course, something you would play for a jury, and, naturally, a lay audience would love it. Classical guitar competitions were always full of such things—there would be a fugue by Brouwer, or one of Nikita Koshkin’s pieces, “Rain,” for instance. While technically demanding and impressive for that, such pieces were not as impressive to another competent player as, say, a careful rendition of the “Concierto Aranjuez,” by Rodrigo. This was played in concerts perhaps more frequently than any other classical work around the world, save maybe for “Romanza,” and against an orchestra, but it offered places where a player could make things more interesting or less, depending on his skill. The first part ran just over six minutes, the second eleven and a half minutes, and the third part a little more than five minutes. Natadze could manage this work, but not as well as he would like—and he figured when he could play it as well as Romero or Fernandez or Bream, then he would be in good company indeed.

Yes, and if he could flap his arms hard enough, perhaps he could
fly
like a bumblebee.

He sighed. It was easier to think about the guitar than his job at the moment. But now it was time to get back to work.

It was getting late, well past quitting time, and Thorn was ready to head home, when he looked up to see Marissa Lowe standing in the doorway of his office.

“I should have called,” she said. “I’m sorry to hear about Gridley,” Marissa said.

Thorn waved her in. She plopped onto the couch.

“Yeah,” he said. “The doctors say they don’t know when he’ll come out of it. Or if he will. He has an old trauma—apparently he got his brain zapped a while back, had an induced stroke—and there’s a worry that the previous injury might somehow be causing problems.” He noticed a slight hint of musk in the air—her perfume?

“You trace the bug?”

“FBI knows where it came from—it’s a commercial unit, nothing real esoteric, sold retail in New York three months ago—but no record of who bought it. A cash sale, and no security cam in the store—which, of course, is a selling point with their customers. Could be anybody.”

“So what now?”

“We’re running through Jay’s files, as best we can. Haven’t found anything worth shooting him for yet.”

She shook her head, glanced down at her watch. “Well, I was just in the neighborhood, and I’ve taken more of your time than I should. I ought to run.”

He paused. He was intrigued by her, he had to admit, and maybe more than intrigued. A part of him wanted to ask her to stay, ask her to dinner, ask her home for the evening, but there was already too much happening too fast.

So, “All right,” was all he said. “It’s been a pleasure.”

Kent was not a fanatic about exercise, and he didn’t expect that a man his age was going to be able to run with twenty-year-old jocks; still, he believed that sitting behind a desk didn’t mean you should turn into a slug, either. He made it a point to hit the obstacle course a couple-three times a week, and to do enough physical training so that if he had to run up a flight of stairs, he wouldn’t keel over from exhaustion. He wasn’t in the shape he’d been in thirty years ago, but he could keep up with any man his age, and some a lot younger.

This particular evening was drizzly and cold, and the steel chin-up bar was wet and rough under his hands. There were the usual die-hards out, even in the gathering darkness, but a lot of the fair-weather athletes were foregoing the pleasure.

His arms burned as he finished his set of chins, and his breath came and went faster than he would have liked. If he lived to be as old as his father, he had another twenty-five years, thirty if he made it to Grampa Jonathan’s age. He was on the downhill slope, no way around that, but staying fit as long as he could was important. His grandfather had been spry until he died of a heart attack in his sleep, and his old man had gone bowling the day before he passed. You worked with what you had.

He gathered himself for his second set of chins. This new job wasn’t the same as those he’d done in the Corps, but there were some good troops on hand, and the chance of getting to a hot zone leading them—that had been part of the deal. His option, Howard had told him. You can sit at HQ and direct things long-distance, or you can suit up and lead in the field. No question but that getting his boots muddy was the choice he’d make, and staying fit was part of that. You didn’t want to be the guy the men were having to carry when they went into harm’s way.

The second set came hard. He would have done ten more, but at eight, the burn was too much. He gutted that one out, but he was done. He let go, dropped back to the ground, and shook his head. There was a time when he would have done three, four sets, run the course, come back and finished off with another set.

He shook his head. That had been a while. Then again, a man his age who could do eighteen chins? That wasn’t so bad. It was all relative, wasn’t it? At least he could still hear—John Howard was sporting a hearing aid, from too many guns having gone off too close to his head. And he didn’t need glasses, except to read. Best to be thankful for what you have than to complain about what you didn’t.

He took a moment to slow his breathing, then made ready to start the course. It was the usual kind of thing—logs and ropes and barricades to clamber over, tire hopping, crawling under razor wire. More than you were apt to run into on any field of combat, urban or country, but that was the point.

The rain began to come down a little harder, not a deluge, but enough to soak everything. Fine. It did rain on the battlefield now and then—he’d even been caught in a frog-drowner of a thunderstorm in a Middle Eastern desert once, a freak thing in which four men had been swept away when a flash flood had caught them in a low spot. You never knew what God was going to throw at you, and like the Boy Scout he had been, “Be prepared” was still his motto.

He headed for the first obstacle.

The rain was coming down in buckets as the limo pulled up to his front door. Hans, the butler, alerted by the chauffeur’s call, stood on the porch with a huge golf umbrella, and was at the car’s door before Cox opened it.

Cox alighted and allowed Hans to keep most of the rain off as they splashed through a puddle and onto the porch.

“Nasty weather,” Cox said.

“Yes, sir.”

Inside, Cox let Hans take his raincoat. As he headed for the study, he saw Laura on the phone in the hallway. She looked up, smiled and waved, and went back to her conversation.

In his study, Cox pulled a cigar from his walk-in humidor, one of the smaller Cubans, clipped the end with a platinum cutter given to him by the Prince of Wales, wet the tip, and used a wooden match to light it—after letting the match’s odor burn off. He puffed on the cigar. Blue smoke wreathed his head. Ah.

“Knock, knock?”

He looked up to see Laura standing in the doorway. She still had her figure after all these years, a handsome woman. “I thought you had a thing this evening?”

“Aid to Rwanda Medical committee meeting,” she said. “It’s been cancelled, due to the weather. The storm moving in could drop two or three inches of rain. Nobody wants to be out driving around in that. Do you have plans for dinner?”

“Not really. I thought I’d have Martina cook a chicken or something.”

“I’ll join you, if that’s all right?”

“That would be nice.” It had been perhaps three weeks since they’d had dinner together.

“I’ll speak to Martina. We can catch up—I talked to Sarah today, I have the latest on little Joseph and William. About an hour?”

He puffed on the cigar and nodded. “Sounds good.”

Once Laura was gone, he knocked the ash off the cigar. He’d only smoke half of it, if that. Too much tobacco and alcohol were killers, he knew that, and he only indulged himself in either infrequently. Half a stogie, twice a week, no more than one or two drinks a day. Coupled with the exercise, he felt as if that was about right.

At dinner, Laura was chatty. He heard all about the grandchildren, their latest adventures, and what his son and daughter-in-law were up to. He mentioned some of his business dealings, but as always, Laura’s eyes seemed to glaze over, and her smile became fixed. She had no ears for industry, never had, even in the early days. If he was happy and enjoying his work, that was enough for her. He could have done a lot worse for a spouse, and, of course, it had been her family’s company that had been his launching pad; he would always owe her for that.

He smiled as she talked about schools and science projects, nodding at the appropriate times. He had not been a particularly attentive father, and while he enjoyed seeing the grandchildren, he didn’t think about them much. His passion had been the job, and through that, he had managed to provide the best of everything for his children and their children. When he was gone, they would have to work at spending it all before they died, and with even cursory management, the fortune he had amassed would last for as long as there were heirs to inherit it.

The one flaw in the perfect tapestry that was his life was this spy business. And he had decided that he was going to deal with that the way he had dealt with every other problem. Whatever it took to resolve it, he would do. He had been taking steps in that direction for some time, without tangible results, but it was only a matter of time before he had what he needed. Once that happened, Eduard would be put into play. And the Net Force people would not be outing him, either. He had a hammer that could squash dinosaurs, and if he had to use it, then that’s what he would do.

He had to remind himself from time to time in this situation that he was one of the most powerful men on the planet. That he was very nearly bulletproof.

He nodded at Laura. “Good to hear they are doing so well,” he said.

She smiled in return. “More wine?”

“Perhaps just a bit more.”

Hans appeared as if by magic, bottle in hand, to pour. Life was almost perfect. Almost.

Natadze went home. He had a nice condo in New York, but he preferred to live in the District when possible, and he considered that his primary residence. The house he used was legally owned by a series of concentric paper-corporations, with no trail to him, set up by the courtesy of Mr. Cox so there was no way anybody could know it was his.

Natadze stayed off the books as much as he could. Those few elements of his persona that had to be public were mostly false—licenses, credit cards, even magazine subscriptions. It was hard to track prey if you couldn’t even identify it, and Eduard worked hard to be as untrackable as possible.

He arrived home at the same time as the FastAir Express carrier’s truck. He had made an arrangement with the delivery man, claiming that evening rounds were more convenient for him, and had made it worth the man’s time to provide the extra service. It was amazing how many problems would just disappear if you threw enough money at them. Another lesson that Mr. Cox had taught him.